1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to lifting devices, particularly package lifting devices for automobile trunks.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Automobile trunks are intended for the storage of articles out of the way of passengers and are generally structured to have sidewalls integral with the car body, a rear wall, and a trunk lid which meets with the sidewalls and rear wall for sealingly covering the trunk space. Commonly, articles which are transported in the trunk are heavy and unwieldy, making it difficult to unload the article from the trunk. Also today's automobiles quite often have rear walls that extend well above the trunk floor, causing the driver significant difficulty in that the article must be lifted up over the rear wall both when putting articles into the trunk and when taking them out. This problem is especially aggravated when the articles must be handled by someone who has an injured or weak back, or someone who for reasons of health or age cannot easily lift articles into and out of the trunk.
One proposal to solve this problem is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,953,287 Werner. Werner teaches a retractable package carrier for an automobile trunk having a basket for supporting articles that is swingable from a position where it rests on the trunk floor to a position upward and rearward near the rear wall of the trunk. A pair of parallel tubes act as guides for reciprocal movement of the basket beyond the rear wall. This solution, which was directed to car designs in 1960, is not readily adaptable to today's car designs which incorporate relatively high rear walls. Because of the greater rear wall height in today's cars and the fact that the basket must achieve this height by swinging, there is a considerable wasted trunk space associated with the significant distance of front to rear movement of the basket during the swing.
A second proposal to solve this problem is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,455,948 to Torres. Torres teaches a platform which is attached to a pair of lazy tongs, each having six mutually articulated bar shaped members. The platform rests on the automobile trunk floor with the lazy tongs folded and then raised upward and rearward by extending action of the lazy tongs. It is questionable whether this device can adequately lift an article above the trunk rear wall of today's cars. Additionally, the relatively large amount of trunk space taken up by the lazy tongs when fully folded, coupled with their requirement for a rearward clearance as they are extended, make this solution inefficient in terms of trunk space utilization.
Both of the above cited references offer solutions which take up otherwise usable trunk space, require the user to lift the device manually, and are not structured to accommodate articles of considerable weight, such as bags of cement, which are often transported in automobile trunks.
Hence, there remains a problem in the art to devise a trunk lift mechanism which takes up very little usable trunk space, is motorized using the car's electrical power, and is sturdy enough to lift any article which may be placeable within the trunk.